Arlene and I had no problem finding the Burnett Cemetery just off of Route 5, across from the Dummerston School. Although the burial ground was not a great expanse, there were plenty of colonial gravestones that would keep us busy searching for the one that bore Lieutenant Spaulding’s name.
Arlene and I alit from our vehicle while eying the best place to start our search. Arlene took the left side, and I took the right. I immediately noticed that the right side of the cemetery was higher in elevation than the rest of the grounds. That’s when something from David L. Mansfield’s The History of the Town of Dummerston (1884) came to me. Spaulding had requested to be buried on higher ground, as the marsh and wetlands made for poor burial. Based on that statement, it made sense for us to search the right side of the cemetery. Also, since Spaulding had been a veteran of a few wars, one of the key things we looked for was a flag or plaque of some sort that the town may have placed near his grave.
The very first stone at the edge of the cemetery was, in fact, Lieutenant Spaulding’s marker. It was a much newer design than would have been common in the lieutenant’s time. Among the other stones were those of some of the first settlers of Dummerston. The burial yard is a wonderful historic cemetery worth visiting for the knowledge gained on the founding of a quintessential Vermont hamlet.
Lieutenant Leonard Spaulding was a celebrated war hero of the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War. He was later elected as the first representative to the Vermont legislature. He was certainly not a person of low intellect or one to fall prey to superstition. In 1756, he married Margaret Sprague Love of Providence, Rhode Island. He served at Crown Point in 1758. Spaulding later settled in Putney about 1768. When his home burned down in 1771, he removed to a farm in Westmoreland, New Hampshire. He remained there for less than a year before moving his family to Dummerston. Despite being wounded during a conflict at Westminster on March 13, 1775, he still continued to fight in the Revolution while his wife and sons, Reuben and Leonard Jr., tended to the farm. Spaulding fought in the famous Battle of Bennington. During the battle, his wife was reportedly out in the garden when she heard the loud booms from cannons some forty miles away. She did not know that a battle was going on, nor did she know that her husband was in the thick of it. Lieutenant Spaulding later represented Dummerston in the General Assembly in 1778, 1781, 1784, 1786 and 1787. His accomplishments and stature as a Vermont statesman speak for themselves.
Lieutenant Spaulding’s marker at the Burnett Cemetery in Dummerston, Vermont.
All of these facts can be found in David L. Mansfield’s History of the Town of Dummerston. Mansfield also writes of a strange ritual that took place in order to rid the Spaulding family of the malady that was taking each member of the family, one by one.
Several of Spaulding’s children died of consumption at a young age. Mary died on May 12, 1782, at the age of twenty. Esther followed her on July 1783 at the age of sixteen. Timothy, twin brother to John, died on June 13, 1785. Most of the children are buried at the Dummerston Center Cemetery. On July 17, 1788, Lieutenant Spaulding died at the age of fifty-nine. As per request, Lieutenant Spaulding was buried in a graveyard east of what is presently known as Slab Hollow. The burial ground is known as Burnett Cemetery, just west of Route 5 on School House Road. This was due to the fact that his intended resting place had turned into a bog, and burial was out of the question. There is a marker to his memory at the far end of the burial yard.
It was less than two years after the lieutenant’s death that thirty-one-year-old Betsey joined her father and brothers, followed by thirty-two-year-old Leonard Jr., on September 3, 1792. At that point, family members, with nowhere else to turn, began to wonder if a supernatural force was preying on them. Historical records are a bit hazy at this point, but some scholars state that it was John Spaulding, twin brother to Timothy, who set the wheels in motion with his death on March 26, 1793.
Renowned author and investigator Joe Nickell of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry took a special interest in Vermont vampires. His research led him to the discovery that the Spaulding family members resting in the Dummerston Center Cemetery were not buried in the order they died. He also suggested that an exorcism might have been performed on Josiah, who died almost five years after Leonard Jr. Since there are no specific names given in Mansfield’s work, it is difficult to determine who was the actual “vampire” of the family.
When one of the remaining two daughters took ill, the family apparently leaned toward the vampire theory and the much-needed exorcism that would accompany it. Mansfield writes:
Although the children of Lt. Spaulding, especially the sons, became large, muscular persons, all but one or two died under 40 years of age of consumption, and their sickness was brief.
It is related to those who remember the circumstance; after six or seven of the family had died of consumption, another daughter was taken, it was supposed, with the same disease. It was thought she would die, and much was said in regard to so many of the family’s dying of consumption when they all seemed to have the appearance of good health and long life. Among the superstitions of those days, we find it was said that a vine or root of some kind grew from coffin to coffin, of those of one family, who died of consumption, and were buried side by side; and when the growing vine had reached the coffin of the last one buried, another one of the family would die; the only way to destroy the influence or effect, was to break the vine; take up the body of the last one buried and burn the vitals, which would be an effectual remedy: Accordingly, the body of the last one buried was dug up and the vitals taken out and burned, and the daughter, it is affirmed, got well and lived many years. The act, doubtless, raised her mind from a state of despondency to hopefullness [sic].
This is another instance where the presence of a vine appears in a documented case of vampirism in New England. In the Johnson case, it was explicitly stated that the vines or sprouts would be growing from the remains, and in the Spaulding case, the vine was said to be growing from coffin to coffin. It is this peculiar reference to the vine that prompts me to believe that this case in provocation may predate the Rachel Burton case by a few months, as the vine does not show up in accounts of the latter. Perhaps in the cases that followed there was no vine or root growing across or within the coffins or they were not buried exactly side by side. In such events, the vine theory would become less prevalent than the actual physical features that the exhumed showed when taken from the grave. If this idea came into play in later cases, it was not added to the documentation, with the exception of two New Hampshire cases where the “vampire hunters” were actually looking for such growth on the deceased more than any other sign as evidence that an evil, consumptive-spreading ghoul had taken over the corpse.
In any event, the vine was cut, the body of the last interred was exhumed and the vitals were cut out and burned. The daughter, strangely enough, recovered from her illness and, according to Mansfield’s research, went on to live a long, healthy life. Mansfield does not name the daughter, but we can guess that it may have been Anna, who died on January 13, 1849, at the age of eighty-one years, nine months and six days. Reuben and Josiah both died young—Reuben, on January 20, 1794, at the age of twenty-eight; and Josiah, on December 3, 1798, at the age of twenty-seven. Margaret Spaulding lived to be ninety-four. She died on May 21, 1827, and is buried next to Anna, although there is no known gravestone to mark her plot.